


Monstrosities

by faithinthepoor



Series: Once Upon a Time [18]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/F, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-15
Updated: 2013-01-15
Packaged: 2017-11-25 15:08:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,144
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/640162
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/faithinthepoor/pseuds/faithinthepoor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set following the episode The Doctor</p>
            </blockquote>





	Monstrosities

**Author's Note:**

> In my series this follows my [Fairytale Drabbles](http://archiveofourown.org/works/618763), [Mirror Mirror](http://archiveofourown.org/works/618771), [This Provincial Life](http://archiveofourown.org/works/618775), [Viviane or Nimue](http://archiveofourown.org/works/618809), [Dreams and Wishes](http://archiveofourown.org/works/618851), [All the Better To….](http://archiveofourown.org/works/619484), [Magic Keys](http://archiveofourown.org/works/619497), [Curiouser and Curiouser](http://archiveofourown.org/works/619514), [Snow Blind](http://archiveofourown.org/works/620280), [Spinning Straw](http://archiveofourown.org/works/620288), [Wooden Hearts](http://archiveofourown.org/works/621128), [Poisoned](http://archiveofourown.org/works/622526), [True Love and Other Curses](http://archiveofourown.org/works/625038), [Spellbound](http://archiveofourown.org/works/628806), [Over the Rainbow](http://archiveofourown.org/works/630076), [Facades](http://archiveofourown.org/works/632227) and [Lost Girls](http://archiveofourown.org/works/636939)

As she sits herself down the scent of hay assaults her senses. This probably isn’t the best environment but she feels that it is where she has to do this. Daniel doesn’t have a grave but he does have a coffin or sorts. He spent longer beneath that glass than he did anywhere else. If anywhere is his home it is the vault but that is not where she has gone. She’s drawn to the stables. This is where he lived and this is where he died. Twice. This is where things ended and where things began. 

She should burn the stables to the ground. This is where she took her first steps towards becoming a monster, which should be reason enough to destroy it, but it also the last place that she was ever happy. She knows nothing good can come of this accursed place but she feels as though she needs it. A very long time ago, when she was different person, she had believed this was where her life was going to start.

She was right about that. She was just wrong about what her life would look like. It’s why she needs this place. It’s a reminder to her that you can not believe in things and that faith, hope and love are the cruellest lies of all.

Regina runs her fingers through the straw and marvels that it is clean. Well, as clean as straw in a stable is ever going to be. It should be stained. It should be red with blood – both hers and Daniel’s. They both died here a long, long time ago. She just didn’t realise it until now.

Everything she has done, all of the mistakes she has made, she honestly believed wouldn’t matter in the end. She could be the queen her mother wanted and the weapon that Rumpelstiltskin desired but one day she would again be the girl that Daniel loved. They could blacken her soul and bloody her hands but they couldn’t touch the part of her that was good and pure. That part had nothing to do with them. It belonged to Daniel and when she found a way to make Daniel return that part of her, the real her, would grow again.

Over the years her faith in her plan had wavered. She was disappearing. She had underestimated not only her mother and Rumpelstiltskin but also the pull of magic itself. Day by day she could feel it corrupting her. Spreading it’s tentacles into parts of her that she had foolishly believed were off limits to evil. She was frightened that there would be nothing good left in her for Daniel to find. 

Storybrooke had seemed like the perfect solution. It would give her respite from her enemies, it would limit her access to magic and Daniel would be far safer there. She thought that she would heal and that when he finally returned she would once again be worthy of him.

At times she feared that there would be too much water under the bridge. No one can collect as many hearts as she did without worrying that they are heartless themselves but heartless people don’t love and she still loved Daniel. She also loved Henry. She had to believe that came from a place of good.

Henry’s despise and distrust of her suggested that perhaps it didn’t but she couldn’t allow herself to dwell on that. She couldn’t change the past so her only hope was to change the future.

She clung to that future when things looked bleak. When, even though they really had no reason to, the people of Storybrooke clearly hated and feared her. That was never her aim, in fact she was treating them the best she knew how, but her time as a queen appeared to have changed the way she dealt with people.

The only time she truly lost hope was when she gave up Daniel’s ring. She knew what that meant. She knew what she was choosing. It was the first time she had actively made a choice to move away from Daniel and the saddest part was that it was the easiest thing in the world. There are few things in her life that she has done with such conviction or such certainty. 

The reason that she was certain is also the reason that she is here – she owes Daniel an explanation and an apology. Not for killing him; as much as it pained her, that was the right thing to do. Daniel was brought back for a reason and whatever the reason was it wasn’t a good one. She could see him struggling with the pain and darkness inside him and as much as she wanted to keep Daniel she couldn’t let the darkness take hold of him. She would not allow him to be robbed of goodness as she had been.

It was horrible to see the good inside him struggling with the monster that he had become. She didn’t want that for Daniel. It was better that he die than live like that. She knows that better than anyone. She often wished that her mother hadn’t loved her. If Cora had only ripped out Regina’s heart instead of Daniel’s everything would have been so much better.

Seeing Daniel was like having an uncomfortable mirror forced into her face. She can add it to the reasons she hates mirrors, even the metaphorical ones. He hadn’t had the years of exposure that she had had and yet he was drowning in the evil inside of him. It makes her wonder what she is really like. If it’s even possible for there to be any good in her. For a moment, when she saw him, she felt a flash of who she used to be but how can she be that girl and kill the boy she loved.

She did love him. Deeply, painfully, damagingly. She still does, seeing him confirmed that, but it’s not the way she used to love him. She has spent her life trying to get back to him but at least now she finally understands that their love belongs in a different time and a different place. Seeing him brought back memories of the girl she used to be but it did not change her back into her. She should feel that she has wasted her life trying to bring Daniel back but in a strange way she feels at peace. This is not the life she wanted, but it’s the life she has and all she can do is make the most of it.

To move forward she needs to close the chapter on Daniel. In her own way she has to say goodbye.

She scrunches the straw in her hand and it bites into her flesh. “Some things don’t change. This place still feels and smells the same. If I close my eyes I can see us here with our whole life ahead of us. I’m so sorry that didn’t get to happen.

“I wanted to marry you. I wanted to have a family with you. I’d picked out names for our beautiful, darkhaired children. You would have been an amazing father.” She takes a breath and then continues, “It turns out that I’m not much of a mother. The boy you saw here, he’s my son. I adopted him and I’ve really tried to be a good mother to him but I think I failed.” She doesn’t bring up the fact that if Daniel hadn’t left her she might have been able to love Henry better – that seems a little unfair. She also doesn’t dwell of the complexities of Henry’s lineage. 

“There was always a danger that I might have been a bad mother. I didn’t exactly have a great role model. I never wanted to turn into her but my son doesn’t love me and worse than that he is afraid of me. I have become everything I ever hated about her.

“When you left me I got lost. I thought that if I could get you back I could get myself back too. Everything I’ve done, and I’ve done some truly vile things, was about getting you back. I know you weren’t quite yourself but I’m not surprised that you had a hard time recognising me. I barely recognise myself.

“It’s the reason I didn’t come and talk to you more in the vault. You were lying there as perfect as you ever were and it reminded me just how far away from you I had travelled. I never believed I wouldn’t get back to you though. It seems so unfair that it finally happened and it was so terrible. Don’t get me wrong, I was glad to see you again but I never wanted to see you in pain.

“I know now that even if you had come back ok, if you’d been just as you were when you left me, that we couldn’t have made things work. It’s not just all the evil that I’ve done, you have stood still but for me time has moved on. I would give anything to take that time away, to go back and be the girl you knew but she died when you did. At least we have that. No one can take that from us.”

She hesitates, not sure what to say next, which is strange because this is the thing she came to tell him. It’s the honesty that she owes him but she finds herself stalling. “I love you. I know you love me. I know you wouldn’t have wanted to see me suffer just as I hated to see you in pain. I need you to know that it hasn’t all been bad, just most of it.

“You told me I should love again. I think that advice might be a bit too late.” She closes her eyes and tries not to cry. “I wish I could tell you it’s because I think I love you too much to ever love again. I can’t even tell you that it’s because I’m too damaged to love.” 

Without thinking she moves her hand to her chest. Her fingers try to clutch a ring that is no longer there. This shouldn’t be so hard. For the longest time she was faithful to him. Her heart was completely faithful to him for decades, even if her body wasn’t. This isn’t a betrayal, not really, but it feels like one. “I guess in a way that is why I am here.” That’s not true, she would be here anyway, but it’s why she is not sitting here, crying uncontrollably, and telling Daniel that she doesn’t know how to live without him.

“I’m not very good at love. It’s part of why I’m such a bad mother. I guess I had forgotten how to love. I didn’t even plan on loving anyone but you. In fact I didn’t think I knew how to love anyone but you. It turns out I was wrong about that.

“I met someone.” She pauses, she knew this would be hard, but it’s so much more difficult than she imagined. “Her name is Emma. I….I love her.” It’s different to the way she feels about Henry and it’s also different to the way she felt about Daniel, back when she was capable of truly feeling, but she is still certain that what she feels for Emma is love. 

“I don’t know if it will go anywhere. I actually don’t even know if I’ll ever see her again. There is a danger that I will repeat what I did with you, that I will spend my life trying to bring her back. I hope that doesn’t happen, I hope I get the chance for something more, but even if I don’t at least I’ve learnt that I’m not completely dead inside.”

She absently picks at the straw that has somehow managed to cover her clothes despite her best attempts to keep herself clean. “I don’t know what I can promise you really. I don’t know that I can promise anything. I’m not well liked. I may not survive that long if the people I have wronged get their way. I do know that I have to do better. I have to do more with whatever time I do have. I have to try to live.

“I can’t stay in the past. I can’t cling to what was good about it without bringing in the bad. I have to try to go forward and because of that I have to finally let you go.”

She brings her hand to her mouth and kisses her fingertips. She then places her fingers on the ground and says the one thing she never though she’d be able to say, “Goodbye Daniel.


End file.
